Sri Lanka has fulfilled a quarter of 2018 budget proposals

Sri Lanka has fulfilled a quarter of 2018 budget proposals11/03/201911/03/2019

Sri Lanka has completed just over a quarter of the proposals made in he 2018 budget so far, State Finance Minister Eran Wickramaratne said.

“Implementation of Budget 2018 is at 27.6 percent completed, 64.2 percent in-progress and only 8.2 percent stalled,” Wickramaratne said in a twitter.com message.

“We are strengthening the implementation process to yield better results this year,” he said.

Budget proposals for one year however may take several years to complete. A road for example may take three to four years to build.

From November to December, the current government had not been in power due to a power struggle between Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena.

Prior to the political crisis, Verite Research, a Colombo-based think tank, in October had said that the government had implemented only 8 percent of its budget proposals in the first 6 months of the year, while 59 percent was lagging and 34 percent was stalled, ignored or not being disclosed.

For 2017, only 8 percent of the budget promises were fulfilled, while 46 percent was partially or substantially achieved, and another 46 percent of the promises were poorly implemented, broken or undisclosed, Verite had said.